I have found that a strong frame around what I am writing goes a long way to easing my day and ensuring that I am able to live some of my strongest values – seeing people as people, connecting to them as people, starting from where they are at (and accepting where that is even if it is hard to see from my perspective), seeing past the emotions and words and ideas to the person who is experiencing and sharing their world.

The other frame that is important here is how my experience and reflections are generated. I engage with and share and reflect with people from a wide range of spaces and places and I reflect on common patterns that I am seeing and remembering and hearing – which is a long way of saying should you think you recognize yourself or someone you know in what I reflect, then I have done my job in accurately reflecting a pattern and more importantly, ummm….probably not!

Which is not to say that something I experienced isn’t part of what I am writing about, it just isn’t all about one event or conversation. Each conversation and experience becomes part of the pattern.

I am really not writing or reflecting about or on you! I am most definitely not judging anything you said or did! I am trying to understand my experience and the world that I am in so I can live my life in a new way, a way that has more ease and peace, more greatness and achievement, more joy and delight and to do that, I am exploring my experiences and how I engage with the world. You are all part of how I experience the world.

If you are reading anything into this, well how curious is that ? Aren’t humans an interesting bunch ? What is it with us and making inferences and not checking into them ?

Even more fascinating, what is it with humans that we are so easily drawn to the drama that comes from feeling wrong, making wrong and conflict ?

Another rabbit hole for me to fall down on this journey of mine.